QuestionsShould we fear death?We lose only the present
Should we fear death?Nothing to fear

We lose only the present

Marcus Aurelius 121 · 180What is not up to you should not trouble you.
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What it claims

Death is not to be feared, and a long life loses no more than a short one.

Why

We can only lose the present moment, the same for everyone: dying young or old, we lose the same.

In short

"We lose only the present" is an argument by Marcus Aurelius (Meditations II, 14; IV, 5; II, 17; XII, 36) on the question "Should we fear death?" (answer: nothing to fear). Its claim: Death is not to be feared, and a long life loses no more than a short one. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Meditations II, 14; IV, 5; II, 17; XII, 36
Valid with an implicit premise

Is dying at twenty really different from dying at eighty? Marcus says no: we can lose only what we possess, and we possess only the present moment. Death, like birth, is a fact of nature: there is no reason to fear it.

P1We can lose only what we possess: neither the past nor the future can be taken from us, since we do not have them.
P2Now we possess only the present.
P3The present is the same for all. So the one who dies old and the one who dies young lose exactly the same thing.
P4Death, like birth, is a fact of nature: elements that came together come apart.
P5 · implicit premiseWhat is in accordance with nature and takes from us only a moment, the same for all, is not an evil to be feared.
Therefore death is not to be feared, and a long life loses no more than a short one.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a natural death, which takes only the present, and which is nevertheless an evil to be feared.
P1 to P3 establish that death takes the same thing from everyone: the present. P4 says it is natural. But to conclude that it is not to be feared, P5 is needed: what is natural and takes only a moment is not an evil. Marcus treats it as obvious ("nothing is evil which is according to nature"), but it is the most disputed point. Compare with Plato, for whom the soul survives (the argument from opposites), and with Spinoza, for whom the wise man does not think about death: Marcus thinks about it every day, but in order to stop fearing it.
Analogy. A show stops while you are watching it. You do not lose the scenes already seen (you had them), nor those not yet played (you did not have them): you lose only the moment the curtain falls, like every spectator in every theatre.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

O
Objection anticipated by Marcus attacks premise 3

But I have not played my five acts, only three! Dying young means leaving the play before the end: the loss is not the same.

Marc Aurèle replies
Marc Aurèle
Well said; but in life three acts are the whole drama. It is nature, which put your elements together and now separates them, that decides when the play is complete, not you.
Thomas Nagel ("Death", 1970) 1970 · attacks premise 2

Death does not take only the present moment: it deprives us of all the good we would have lived had we gone on living. A child who dies loses far more than an old man, even if the child does not yet "possess" that future.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1970, after the author's death (180).
The debate goes on (our summary) A Stoic would answer that these future goods are not real goods: the only good is to act virtuously, and a just life is complete at every moment, whatever its length ("three acts are the whole play"). Nagel could retort that one must then accept that living a good life for longer is no better, which almost nobody believes.
John Stuart Mill ("Nature") 1874 · attacks premise 5

What is natural is not thereby good: nature inflicts suffering and kills without justice, and disease is natural too. Saying "it is according to nature, so it is not an evil" proves nothing.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1874, after the author's death (180).
The debate goes on (our summary) A Stoic would answer that "according to nature" does not mean "pleasant": only what makes us worse is an evil, and death makes no one less just or less brave. But this answer amounts to defending another premise, the one in the argument "Only your judgement can harm you".
What today's voices say
Defend it
Ryan HolidayHe carries a memento mori coin with Marcus Aurelius' line 'you could leave life right now' and often retells Marcus on Alexander the Great and his mule driver buried in the same earth.